BOOKS.
THE STORY OF CAWNFORE..
AT last we have an authentic narrative of the whole of that most piteous episode of the Indian rebellion, the siege of Cawnpore, about which so many fabulous and conflicting statements have been circulated. Some obscure journals published in India have even dared to impute want of courage to the defenders of the gar- rison ; and Mr. Shepherd, the general truthfulness of whose nar-
rative is acknowledged by Captain Thomson, has by one unfortu- nate mistake given some pretext for the utterance of that cruel libel. Our readers are aware that Mr. Shepherd, a Eurasian in the Commissariat department, left the entrenchment three days before the capitulation and massacre, with instructions from Gene- ral Wheeler to try and negotiate with certain influential persons in the native city, so as to bring about a rupture with the rebels. Mr. Shepherd says, that on the 24th June, the day of his depar- ture, " There were provisions yet left to keep the people alive for the next fifteen or twenty days." The inference is, that the gar- rison ought to have held out so much longer ; but, says Captain Thomson, " this is an error, as when the capitulation was pro- jected we had already been placed several days on half rations, and there were then in stock only supplies for four more days at the reduced rate." Now, before this reduction the full daily had been a handfid of split peas and another of flour, making barely half a pint together. Just before the commence- ment of the siege General Wheeler gave orders to lay in supplies for twenty-five days; but either in consequence of the defection of the native agents, or because the General had only arranged for the support of the military, the stock of food was " ridiculously insufficient," and the bulk of it consisted of the two articles we have named. The regimental messes sent in contributions of beer, wine, and preserved food ; but the liquids were soon destroyed by the enemy's shot, and the solids did not hold out a week.
"As long as they lasted all shared alike • the youngest recruit had the same rations as the old general ; no distinctions were made between civili- ans and military men, and there was not a solitary instance in which an in- dividual had lost sight of the common necessity and sacrificed it to self-in- terest by hoarding supplies. Ammunition was plentiful, their being in the field magazines, two thousand pounds of powder, with ball cartridge and round shot in abundance."
The other elements of defence were weak indeed. Ten guns, one of which was a twenty--four pounder howitzer, one a rifled three-pounder, which could only be used for firing grape, there being no conical shot in store, and the rest nine-pounders, were all tb,e, artillery that could be brought to the position, and itir only bulwark was a mild wall four feet high. It formed quadrangular enclosure, in the centre of which were two brick buildings, one thatched, the other roofed with masonry, in which the women and children, and the wounded were lodged. When the siege began on the ith June, there were within the intrench- ment considerably more than a thousand Europeans, about 300 of whom were military, one third being officers of Sepoy regiments that had mutinied. Two hundred yard to the South of the intrench- ment there was a range of detached and unfinished barracks which commanded it, and in one of which it was, therefore, necessary to place an outpicket. This post was held with the utmost skill and courage by sixteen civilians belonging to the railway, who main- tained it for three entire days without any military, superintendence whatever, and were subsequently commanded by Captain Jenkins. Foiled in all their attempts to surprise this party, the Sepoys in a few days occupied the last of the range of barracks, that one nearest the intrenchment, whereupon a detachment of sixteen men were placed in the second barrack, which now became the key of the position, and here Captain Thomson commanded. It was only by day that he and his sixteen harassed men could take it by turns " to squeeze down between the sharp edges of brickbats and get a nap, sweeter than that often obtained in beds of down," though he is sure that during a whole fortnight he did not get two hours of consecutive sleep. Had it not been for the most surprising cow- ardice in attack of the black swarm of assailants, the place could not have held out for four and twenty hours. The combined out- pickets "always swept through the adjacent barracks once, and sometimes twice a day in chase of the foe. They scarcely ever stood for a hand to hand fight, but heaps of them were left dead as the result of these sallies." A few prisoners were taken in these charges, but this seldom happened, for it was most rare to see among the wounded one who was not quite dead. "These prisoners taken from the Sepoys always gave utterance to pro- fuse exclamations of wonder at our holding out from day to day as we did, and looked upon the cause as something altogether supernatural; they had all felt sure that we must be overpowered by their numbers, or at least be utterly destroyed by the intense heat of the season. This last opinion will not be thought unreasonable when I say, that it was often quite impossible to touch the barrel of a gun, and once or twice muskets went off at midday, either from the sun exploding their caps or from the fiery heat of the metal." Captain Thomson's sixteen men were soon killed or disabled. As fast as they fell, their places were supplied from the main guard ; and amidst the incessant toils and perils of the out-picket it was felt as a relief to be removed from the sickening spectacles continually occurring in the intrenchment. Inconceivable was the havoc wrought there by the enemy's heavy artillery. All the doors and windows of the stronger of the two buildings were shot away, and great numbers were killed within it by missiles of all
• Pies Story of Casonpore. By Captain Mowbray Thomson, Bengal Army, one of the only two survivors of the Cawnpore Garrison. Published by Bentley.
sorts continually flying through it. The thatched building, part of which was used as a hospital, was set on fir by a shell one night in the second week of the siege, and all the medical stores and surgical instruments were destroyed in the flames. This calamity added terribly to the sufferings of the wounded, for thenceforth it was impossible to extract bullets or dress mutilations. After the fire the men of the 32d Regiment who had been invalided in the building, raked the ashes over with bayonets and swords, making diligent search for their lost medals, whilst the bullets of the Sepoys were flying about them. The well in the intrench- ment was one of the greatest points of danger, the enemy making it continually a mark for rape-shot by day and night.
"The water was between sixty and seventy feet from the surface of the ground, and with mere hand over hand labour it was wearisome work. My Mend, John M‘Nillop, of the Civil Service, greatly distinguished himself here ; he became self-constituted captain ofthe well. He jocosely said that he was no fighting man, but would make himself useful where he could, and accordingly he took this post; drawing for the supply of the women and the children as often as he could. It was less than a week after he had undertaken this self-denying service, when his numerous escapes were fol- lowed by a grape-shot wound in the groin, and speedy death. Disinterested even in death, his last words were an earnest entreaty that somebody would go and draw water for a lady to whom he had promised it. The sufferings of the women and children from thirst were intense, and the men could scarcely endure the cries for drink which were almost perpetual from the poor little babes, terribly unconscious they were, most of them of the great,
great, cost at which only it could be procured. I have seen the chil- dren of my brother officers sucking the pieces of old water-bags,put- ting scraps of canvas and leather straps into the mouth to try and get a single drop of moisture upon their parched lips. Not even a pint of water was to be had for washing from the commencement to the close of the siege ; and those only who have lived in India can imagine the cala- mity of such a privation to delicate women who had been accustomed to the most frequent and copious ablutions as a necessary of existence. Had the relieving force which we all thought to have been on its way from Calcutta ever seen our beleaguered party, strange indeed would the appearance pre- sented by any of us after the first week or ten days have seemed to them. " Tattered in clothing, begrimed with dirt, emaciated in countenance, were all without exception ; faces that had been beautiful were now chiselled with deep forrows ; haggard despair seated itself where there had been a month before only smiles. Some were sinking into the settled vacancy of look which marked insanity. The old, babbling with confirmed imbecility, and the young raving in not a few cases with wild mania ; while only the strongest retained the calmness demanded by the occasion. And yet, look- ing back upon the horrible straits to which the women were driven, the maintenance of modesty and delicate feeling by them to the last, is one of the greatest marvels of the heart-rending memories of those twenty-one days." Nana Sahib celebrated the 23d of June 1857, the hundredth an- niversary of the battle of Plassey, by the boldest attempt which had been yet made to carry the outpickets and the intrenchment by simultaneous assaults, but these were repulsed, and thence- forth the enemy abandoned all attempts of the kind, and trusted to the effects a incessant toil and starvation. On the 21st day of the siege, Mrs. Greenway, a prisoner to the Nana, who had mur- dered her family, was sent by him to the intrenchment with a letter offering terms of capitulation to the besieged. In the council of war, which was immediately held, Sir Hugh Wheeler, . "still hopeful of relief from Calcutta, and suspicious of treachery, on the part of the Nana, for a long time most strenuously opposed. the idea of making terms "; it was the expostulations of his second command, Captain Moore, " the life and soul of the defence," that won from him at last a reluctant consent.
"All of us who were juniors adopted the views of the brave old general, but we well knew that it was only consideration for the weak and the wounded, that turned the vote against us. Had there been only men there, I am sure we should have made a dash for Allahabad rather than have thought of surrender; and Captain Moore would have been the first to lead the for- lorn hope. A braver soul than he never breathed. It is easy enough in the comfortable retirement of the club dining-room, for Colonel Pipeclay to call in question the propriety of the surrender • and his cousin, Mr. Scnbe, in glowing trisyllabics, can fluently enough 'discourse of military honour and British heroism of olden times. Only let these gentlemen take into consideration in their wine-and-walnut arguments, the famished sucklings, the woe-worn women, who awaited the issue of those deliberations, and perhaps even they will admit, as all true soldiers and sensible citzens have done, that there remained nothing better for our leaders to do than to hope the best from an honourable capitulation."
The treaty of capitulation was concluded with every precaution on the part of the English leaders that might be supposed to give security to their proceedings, and on the 27th of June the trea- cherous plot was consummated. Captain Thomson swam to the boat containing the only party that escaped immediate destruc- tion. Three days and nights without oars or sails, and without a morsel of food, they drifted and grounded alternately, falling fast all the while under the fire with which they were continually pursued. The boat was ultimately captured, and all on board carried back to the slaughter in Cawnpore ; but Captain Thomson was preserved from this fate, being ordered, on the third day, with Lieutenant Delafosse, a sergeant and eleven privates, to wade to the shore and drive off the Sepoys, while those on board were trying to ease the boat off a sand-bank, on which it was aground. The desperate service was performed without the loss of a man ; but when the little party returned to the spot where they had landed, the boat was gone.
"Our only hope of safety now was in flight ; and, with a burning sun overhead, a rugged raving ground, and no covering for the feet, it was no easy task for our half-famished party to make bead ; but a rabble of ryots and sepoys at our heels soon put all deliberation upon the course to be pur- sued, as it did ourselves, to flight. For about three miles we retreated, when I saw a temple in the distance, and gave orders to make for that. To render us less conspicuous as marks for the guns, we had separated to the distance of about twenty paces apart; from time to time loading and firing as we best could upon the multitude in our rear. As he was entering the temple, Sergeant Grady was shot through the head. I instantly set four of the men crouching down in the doorway with bayonets fixed, and their muskets so placed as to form a cheval-de. (rise in the narrow entrance. The mob came on helter-skelter in such maddening haste that some of them fell or were pushed on to the bayonets, and their transfixed bodies made the barrier im- passable to the rest, upon whom we, from behind our novel defence, poured shot upon shot into the crowd. The situation was the more favourable to us, in consequence of the temple having been built upon a base of brickwork three feet from the ground, and approached by steps on one side. The brother of Baboo Barn Buksh, who was leading the mob, was slain here ; and his bereaved relation was pleased to send word to the Nana that the English were thoroughly invincible. Foiled in their attempts to enter our asylum, they next began to dig at its foundation ; but the walls had been well laid, and were not so easily to be moved as they expected. They now fetched faggots, and from the circular construction of the building they were able to place them right in front of the doorway with impunity, there being no window or loop-hole in the place through which we could attack them, nor any means of so doing, without exposing ourselves to the whole mob at the entrance. In the centre of the temple there was an altar for the presentation of gifts to the presiding deity ; his shrine, however, had not lately been enriched, or it had more recently been visited by his ministering priests, for there were no gifts upon it. There was, however, in a deep hole in the centre of the stone which constituted the altar, a hollow with a pint or two of water in it, which, although long since putrid, we bailed out with our hands, and sucked down with great avidity. When the pile of faggots had reached the top of the doorway, or nearly so, they set them on fire, expecting to suffocate us ; but a strong breeze kindly sent the great body of the smoke away from the interior of the temple. Fearing that the suffocating sultry atmosphere would be soon insupportable, I proposed to the men to sell their lives as dearly as possible ; but we stood until the wood bad sunk down into a pile of embers, and we began to hope that we might brave out their torture till night (apparently the only friend left us) would let us get out for food and attempted escape. But their next expedient compelled an evacuation • for they brought bags of gunpowder, and threw them upon the red hot ashes. Delay would have been certain suffocation—so out we rushed. The burning wood terribly marred our bare feet, but it was no time to think of trifles. Jumping the parapet, we were in the thick of the rabble in an instant ; we fired a volley, and ran a-muck with the bayonet. Seven of our number succeeded in reaching the bank of the river, and we first threw in our guns and then ourselves. The weight of ammunition we had in the pouches carried us under the water ; while we were thus submerged we escaped the first volley that they fired. We slipped off the belts, rose again, and swam ; and by the time they had loaded a second time, there were only heads for them to aim at. I turned round, and saw the banks of the river thronged with the black multitude, yelling, howling, and firing at us; while others of their party rifled the bodies of the six poor fellows we had left behind. Presently two more were shot in the head ; and one private, Ryan, almost sinking from exhaustion, swam into a sandbank and was knocked on the head by two or three ruffians waiting to receive him. These villains had first promised Lieutenant Delafosse and private Murphy that if they would come to the shore they should be protected, and have food given to them. They were so much inclined to yield that they made towards the bank, but sud- denly and wisely altered their determination. Infuriated with disappoint- ment, one of them threw his club atIDelafosse ; but in the height of his ener- gy lost his balance and fell into deep water ; the other aimed at Murphy, and struck him on the heel. For two or three hours, we continued swim- ming ; often changing our position, and the current our progress. At length our pursuers gave up the chase ; a sower on horseback was the last we saw of them."
When Captain Thomson led this valorous attack and retreat he was suffering from a gunshot wound in the head received on board the boat, having been twice before wounded in the defence of Cawnpore. After swimming six miles, he and the other three who were left of his party were dragged on shore, quite unable to sustain themselves out of the water, by the retainers cf the friendly Rajah Derigbijah Singh. Sullivan died some weeks after of cholera; Murphy cannot be found and is believed to be dead. Captain Thomson and Lieutenant Delafosse alone survive. May they live to attain and long enjoy the highest honours of the no- ble service which has so much reason to be proud of them.
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